ISLAMABAD: Senator Farhatullah Babar said that handing over the task of NGOs registration to security agencies is like asking the wolf to guard the lamb and called for rooting registration of NGOs as well as accountability of state agencies in legislation instead of executive order.
Taking part in discussion in the human rights committee of senate Wednesday, he said that policy framework to deal with civil society organisations must be rooted in legislation and not by security agencies accused of human rights violations and excesses against citizens. He said this in the meeting chaired by Senator Nasreen Jalil was attended by Senators Sitara Ayaz, Sehar Kamran, Mufti Abdul Sattar, Mohsin Leghari, Karim Khawaja and Farhatullah Babar.
Senator Farhatullah Babar said it must find a place in the annals of world record that the fate of NGOs working for the recovery of missing persons is in the hands of those very agencies accused of involvement in enforced disappearances and also are not accountable, he said.
He said that previously the EAD used to deal with the registration of INGOs. But now the Interior Ministry dealt with it through a committee that also included the ISI. “As a result more than half of the over one hundred INGOs that had applied for registration were disallowed to operate in the country, he said quoting from a reply to a question recently asked in the Senate.”
He said it has been claimed that the new policy was based on the Fatemi report, but the report was never made public and demanded that it be made public. “We need to have appropriate legislation for the smooth working of NGOs, and, at the same time, there is need for legislation to regulate the workings of state agencies, he said and reminded that the Senate Committee of the Whole had endorsed a draft bill for this purpose.
He asked the government to come out clean on the recommendations of the Committee of the Whole and explain reasons why it is unable to bring the agencies under some legislation.
He said that Pakistan was a signatory to international conventions on civil society organisations and warned that not implementation of the promises made result in serious embarrassment at the time of GSP plus review.
Senator Farhatullah Babar said the government is happy with the NGOs that relieve the state of responsibility of building schools and hospitals. “Indeed even banned outfits are allowed to engage in it. One is not sure whether the ban announced two days ago will be implemented in letter and spirit because such announcements were made in the past also,” he said.
He said ideology and the undefined ‘national security interest’ were increasingly employed to silence the voice of civil society organisations from expressing alternate ideas and
opinions and dissent. During discussion on the recent Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of human rights record in Geneva, the senator said that at the previous review five years ago, Pakistan had agreed to a number of recommendations to criminalise enforced disappearances and deplored that no steps had been taken. Similarly, he said the claim in the national report that blasphemy laws are non discriminatory and that no one has been punished under it was not correct. “It will do us no disservice if we admit that the fair and just implementation of blasphemy law presents challenges that the state is trying to address,” he said.
Senator Farhatullah Babar said the claim of a strong commitment to protect freedom of expression is belied in the face of undeniable facts and figures how the Cyber Crimes Act, 2016, has been misused by state agencies to stifle dissent in the name of national security considerations and for protecting the integrity of the federation.
He said that the promise of reviewing the number of laws that carry death penalty had also not been kept as today there were as many as 27 crimes that carried death penalty.
